After serv­ing his com­mu­nity in Childers so well, veteran fire­fighter Col San­taca­te­rina is hang­ing up his boots to en­joy re­tire­ment

COL “CURL” San­taca­te­rina re­clines in the lounge of his Childers home look­ing into the open space in front of him.

He, wife Bev and I are seated in the San­taca­te­rina fam­ily home, re­liv­ing Curl’s fire­fight­ing ca­reer, which will end early next week.

“What am I sup­posed to do with my Wed­nes­days now?” he asks with a laugh.

It would be an un­der­state­ment to de­scribe fire­fight­ing as be­ing one of the big­gest parts of Mr San­taca­te­rina’s life.

He first be­came in­volved in the ser­vice in 1980, and rose to the rank of cap­tain in his 35 years of ser­vice.

But come Tues­day he will no longer be an ac­tive fire­fighter, with Queens­land Fire and Emer­gency Ser­vice’s com­pul­sory re­tire­ment age for aux­il­iary fire­fight­ers com­ing into ef­fect.

“If I didn’t have to re­tire, I wouldn’t,” Mr San­taca­te­rina said.

It re­mains to be seen how Mr San­taca­te­rina will ad­just to life after fire­fight­ing.

He will still drive trains for Bundy Sugar dur­ing the crush, though there will be a size­able hole left in his life come Tues­day.

Mr San­taca­te­rina has been in­volved in some of the worst tragedies in the re­gion’s his­tory over his years, in­clud­ing nu­mer­ous high­way fa­tal­i­ties and the un­for­get­table 2000 fire at the Palace Back­pack­ers Hos­tel that claimed 15 lives.

THE BE­GIN­NING

“THERE was no PPE (per­sonal pro­tec­tive equip­ment) and all of that back then,” Mr San­taca­te­rina said.

Bev re­veals there are pho­tos of Mr San­taca­te­rina fight­ing fires wear­ing only shorts, some­thing you wouldn’t con­sider pos­si­ble in 2014.

Fire­fight­ing in re­gional Queens­land was an en­tirely dif­fer­ent set-up to the cen­tralised ser­vice it is to­day, with dis­tinct bound­aries be­tween brigades and their ju­ris­dic­tions.

The tech­nol­ogy was com­pletely dif­fer­ent as well, with Mr San­taca­te­rina first learn­ing to use a pump sys­tem.

“It works a lot bet­ter now,” Mr San­taca­te­rina said. “You’re not on your own any more.

“We learned how to do it the hard way.

“I had to pump it be­cause I was the youngest. It was a

lot of hard work.”

IT’S MORE THAN A JOB

IF YOU ever need to be con­vinced about the ben­e­fits of skills learned in the emer­gency ser­vices, look no fur­ther than Bev and Curl San­taca­te­rina.